The blog of fantasy author Shanna Swendson. Read about my adventures in publishing and occasionally life.

Monday, April 08, 2013

Cold Medicine and Crazy Movies

I think I'm just about over the cold. I'm just tired today. This was an odd cold because it came in phases. Thursday was the constant dripping. Friday added constant sneezing with a slight drip. Saturday was the stuffy day, with occasional sneezing and dripping. Sunday I had bits of all those symptoms, but milder, but with a fever. For a cold, it wasn't as miserable as it could have been. I did some reading, a lot of knitting (I'm almost done with the blanket) and watched some awful movies. There's something about being sick that makes me crave bad movies that I wouldn't be able to tolerate at any other time. Fortunately, there's Lifetime Movie Network OnDemand.

Some of these movies are so insane that they come back around to amazing. Like, there was this one where Molly Ringwald (!) is an unlucky in love small-town lawyer who's bemoaning her latest break-up over the phone to her best friend, and just when her friend tells her that when she's least expecting it, the perfect man will fall into her life, a badly injured man stumbles into her main street law office and collapses. Later at the hospital, she learns that he has a head injury but should be okay -- but he has no memory of who he is. He also has no ID. But the hospital can't just keep him around, so they're going to release him even though he has nowhere to go. So, she takes a leap of faith and brings him home with her, where he proves to be the perfect man, cooking and cleaning and complimenting her. Even better, when the "Lost Man" article with his photo appears in the local newspaper, a young pregnant woman comes forward to say she knows what happened to him -- a big, scary man was attacking her and this guy defended her so she could escape, but must have been injured in the process. But then just as Molly is falling in love with him, the publicity from the hero story brings in a lot of attention -- and his wife. And then just as Molly is bravely giving him up because she won't stand in the way of his marriage, another woman shows up, claiming to be his wife, too. Since the movie started in romantic comedy mode, I thought it would be wacky hijinks of women coming out of the woodwork to claim the amnesia patient as their husband until she figured out he wasn't really married to any of them, but it turned out this was all for real.

So then the local DA decides to make her career and get publicity by charging and trying him for bigamy and tax fraud, and our heroine Molly decides to defend him, with the creative defense that after the injury he's a completely different person, and therefore can't be held accountable for the crimes he committed previously. Though I think if she were a truly clever lawyer, she'd have questioned her town's jurisdiction over the case, since wouldn't he have to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred, not just the place he happened to be when it was discovered? And would tax fraud even be tried in the same court? If he was claiming both wives as dependents, that might be fraud, but they'd have to prove bigamy, then audit his returns, and then charge with tax fraud. It wouldn't be done in the same trial. So, anyway, it gets more and more insane, and I'm yelling at Molly to listen to one of the expert witnesses about how bigamists tend to be charming sociopaths who easily sway people into doing things for them but who don't care about how their actions affect other people, because, seriously, dude is way over the top with his devotion for her and you just know a twist is coming.

But, you know, that wasn't nearly as insanely cracktastic as the "real" movie I watched Sunday afternoon, Snow White and the Huntsman. I mean, there were Oscar winners in it, but otherwise it was a fantasy cheese Saturday-night SyFy movie with better production values. I think they must have used a script intended for a fantasy cheese movie (which means maybe I should raise my screenwriting ambition horizons -- maybe my fantasy cheese movie could get the big-screen treatment!). It's a good thing I didn't see this movie at the theater because I'd have annoyed the other patrons by talking back to the screen.

Now, though, since I had yet another work anxiety dream last night (a client I forgot I had was going to a trade show this week, and I wasn't ready), I'm going to try to get some writing work done today. I'm tired and weak, but sitting and reading counts as resting.